Few technologies have divided the Middle East like Twitter: Young people love it; their governments not as much.

The San Francisco-based microblogging service played a significant role in facilitating the uprisings that shook the region two years ago and brought down the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya.

As Twitter now plans a public offering in the U.S., the mideast region — with both its potential and pitfalls–increasingly figures into the company’s future, according to Shailesh Rao, the company’s head of Asia Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and emerging markets.

The Middle East/North Africa region accounts for 6% of Twitter’s active users, and the tweeting device of choice more often than elsewhere is the mobile smartphone, he said during a break at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit.

The region has seen “terrific adoption” of twitter in the last several years, he said. And, notwithstanding the publicity surrounding Twitter’s role in demonstrations and increasing government crackdowns on tweeting and retweeting, much of the activity is entirely apolitical, he said.

The hashtag #Eid was tweeted some three million times during the observance of the recent Islamic religious holiday, he pointed out, and entertainment events from soccer to the Arab Idol television show have proven huge tweet generators.

“There’s a fair amount of diversity,” he said. “That sets the stage for advertisers.”

Still, the medium also continues to give some governments in the region concerns–even as users as diverse as teen idols, conservative clerics and cloistered housewives take to Twitter in droves. To be sure, some governments have also embraced twitter; Abu Dhabi is featuring Mr. Rao and other Twitter executives at the annual government-sponsored media conference.

Yet governments–including Kuwait, Qatar and even the United Arab Emirates (of which Abu Dhabi is a member emirate)–have also come down hard on Twitter users who criticize the government or, especially, the ruling sheikhs. Some have been convicted and jailed. In the UAE, some family members of a group of men accused of trying to overthrow the monarchy were detained for tweeting about the trial.

Mr. Rao said Twitter itself has terms and conditions of use that allow it to take some users off-line, and the company is committed to obeying all local laws. But the company still sees its mission as promoting people’s freedom to say what they please within Twitter’s usage guidelines. He said Twitter has a special team that works to familiarize government officials in the Middle East, as well as elsewhere, about how twitter works and is used–in hope that a better understanding will ameliorate some government worries.